Amazon: Stop selling whale meat!

"Be the change you wish to see in the world" ~Mohandas Gandhi
"Our lives began and end the day we become silent things that matter" ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Originally Posted: February 21, 2012

Amazon: Stop selling whale meat!

[Ed. Note: VICTORY update as of 2/22/12. From HSUS.org: "Update 2/22: Just 24
hrs after our campaign to urge Amazon to pull whale meat from its shelves, the
products have been removed. We’re encouraged by this positive development, and
we’ll close our action alert when they finalize a formal policy to make sales of
whale meat history!"]

Japan continues to undermine international laws by hunting whales and
trading in whale meat. These great whale species are afforded full legal
protection by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and the Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora
(CITES); yet Amazon.com, through its wholly owned subsidiary Amazon.jp in
Japan, is actively involved in the sale of hundreds of whale, dolphin and
porpoise products. These include endangered fin whale products from Iceland,
as well as endangered whale meat from the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

Some of the whale products sold by Amazon.jp are highly polluted with
mercury and constitute a significant risk to the health of consumers. In
February 2011, the Environmental Investigation Agency analyzed several whale
products from Amazon.jp and found that the majority of those tested
contained mercury levels exceeding Japanese national limits.

As Amazon.com Inc. profits from Amazon.jp’s sale of whale products, it is
responsible not only for facilitating the sale of products from endangered
and protected species, but also for allowing the sale of contaminated food
products which pose a potential health threat to the people consuming them.

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